Microsoft’s Sanjay Mishra and Mike Ruthruff have published a very informative technical note on SQLCAT.com that discusses different methods for increasing performance with compressed backups with SQL Server 2008. One of the more valuable new features in SQL Server 2008 is native backup compression, which can typically give you a 3 to 4 to 1 compression ratio for database backups at the cost of some added CPU.

The technical note does a good job of explaining the effect of various configuration and tuning options upon backup elapsed time and CPU utilization with compressed backups. I am a little more familiar than I otherwise would be with the content of the document, since I was one of the technical reviewers for it (something I hope to do more of in the near future).